Over the past decades, a compendium of various physical activities has been compiled that ranges from more vigorous activities in the occupational and recreational domains, to mundane household tasks and chores. These have been developed to allow users to understand their individual activity profile for intake and caloric expenditure. Teaching gross anatomical dissection courses is physically demanding, and anecdotally, has a different activity profile than teaching other courses. The purpose of this study was to quantify the basic activity profile of gross anatomical instruction and compare these measure to other occupation tasks. For a period of 4-years, faculty and laboratory staff (n=52; 35.6 years + 8) were provided commercially available activity monitors (Fitbit Charge, Fitbit, San Francisco, CA) and were worn during all gross anatomy lab dissections (272 min/session + 38) in a semester-long class. Data were collected and reported after each class session including, steps, caloric expenditure and time of activity. The average caloric expenditure/session was 569.47 kCal (SD = 33.8), or 126.55 kCal/hour during the instruction of gross anatomy lab experiences and was found to be similar to general carpentry (145 kCal/hour) and custodial work (136 kCal/hour). However, the profession that was most similar was nursing. A recent study has shown (Allan, et al, Journal of Research in Nursing, 2019) that ward nurses on 12-hour shifts exhibit caloric expenditure of 1512kCal/shift, or 126.75 kCal/hour. When the objective tasks are compared, its not surprising that these professions exhibit similar results. Both repeatedly perform work from station-to-station throughout the day requiring above average amounts of standing and walking. Further, the work performed at a station also requires a mixture of finite precision and moving of the subject/patient. Although these data aren’t unique or novel, it may be of particular interest to those that perform this occupation skill. Guiding the dissection experiences for medical and allied health students is a vigorous and strenuous job that requires the background and familiarity human anatomical structures with physical demands that are more extensive than a typical class or laboratory setting.
